CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN CINEMA Spring 2016

This series queries the current state of film on a continent that has seen dramatic transformations in the past two decades, supporting a course that explores how European cinema is responding to the current economic and political crisis situation that endangers the project of a unified and strong European Union consisting of partner nations that was initiated soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Selected films from countries such as Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, England, Greece, Spain and Italy discuss and visualize the impact of increasing migration into Europe today. Professor: Bastian Heinsohn. Screenings are free and open to the public.Friday, January 22 at 3pm

WELCOME

Philippe Lioret (France 2009) 110 min. 35MM. With Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi. French, Kurdish & English with English subtitles.
A compassionate immigration drama about the hope of new beginnings and the power of true love, Welcome centers on two couples contending with issues of separation and dislocation. A 17 year-old Kurdish refugee has struggled his way through Europe for 3 months, trying to reunite with his girlfriend, who recently emigrated to England. Stopped by authorities on the French side of the Channel, he meets a swimming instructor in turmoil over his imminent divorce. Their relationship is an extraordinary account of human bonding that won the Ecumenical Jury & Europa Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

MEDITERRANEA

Jonas Carpignano (Italy/France/US/Germany 2015) 107 min. DCP. With Koudous Seihon, Alassane Sy. Multiple languages with English subtitles.
This remarkably timely, eye-opening look at an all-too-real issue charts the death-defying struggle of African migrants as they risk everything to start a new life in Europe. Ayiva (first time actor Koudous Seihon in a revelatory performance) and Abas (Sy) are close friends from Burkina Faso determined to make it to Italy in order to find work and provide for their families back home. But even after surviving the harrowing journey nothing can prepare the two men for the hostility and violence that awaits them.

WHITE GOD

Kornél Mundruczó (Hungary/Germany/Sweden 2014) 119 min. DCP. With Zsófia Psotta, Sándor Zsótér, Lili Horváth. Hungarian/English with English subtitles.
Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2014 Cannes Festival, Kornel Mundruczó’s newest film is a story of the indignities visited upon animals by their supposed human superiors, but it’s also a stark, beautiful metaphor for the political and cultural tensions sweeping contemporary Europe. When young Lili is forced to give up her beloved dog Hagen because its mixed-breed heritage is deemed “unfit” by The State, she and the dog begin a dangerous journey to reunite. At the same time, all the unwanted, unloved and so-called “unfit” dogs rise up under a new leader, Hagen, the one-time house pet who has learned in his journey through the streets and animal control centers that man is not always dog’s best friend.

LORNA’S SILENCE

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium, France, Italy 2008) 105 min. 35MM. With Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione. French with English subtitles.
Lorna, a young Albanian woman trying to get Belgian citizenship and build a better life, finds herself in dangerous territory when she is drawn into the orbit of a shady Russian mobster. The Belgian writer-director team that is the Dardenne brothers are preeminent heirs to a lineage of European realist cinema, drawing raw portraits of protagonists living on the outskirts of affluent Western society with an immediacy and intimacy informed by their roots in documentary. Their “uncompromising, beautifully observed studies of Belgium’s urban poor reveal a peerless talent for conjuring drama out of the mundane and wresting emotion from determinedly unsentimental material” (Variety).

LE HAVRE

Aki Kaurismäki (France/Finland 2011) 93 min. 35MM. With André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Blondin Miguel. French with English subtitles.
In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoeshiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight.

SISTER

Ursula Meier (Switzerland/France 2012) 97 min. DCP. With Léa Seydoux, Kacey Mottet Klein, Martin Compston. French with English subtitles.
Twelve-year-old Simon (Klein) lives in a housing complex hovel next door to a luxury ski resort with Louise (Seydoux), his sister twice his age. When Louise steals the pot of money Simon was saving to support her, and then returns with a surprise, the siblings’ already unconventional relationship is upended. Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlinale, and nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar.

THE HUNT

Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark 2012) 115 min. DCP. With Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp. Danish with English subtitles.
The madness of crowds consumes a small Danish village after a kindergarten teacher (Mikkelsen) is falsely accused of abusing one of his students, the daughter of his work colleague and best friend. As the darkest winter days draw near, chaos replaces reason throughout the town. Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Hunt’s Mads Mikkelsen won the Best Actor Award at Cannes.

REALITY

Matteo Garrone (Italy 2012) 116 min. 35 MM. With Aniello Arena, Paola Minaccioni, Loredana Simioli. Italian with English subtitles.
Luciano (Arena) is a young fishmonger in Naples who dreams of a life on reality television. Obsessed with “Grande Fratello,” the Italian “Big Brother,” Luciano develops an extensive Truman Show delusion after coming home from the show’s audition. Believing that cameras are constantly watching, Luciano soon so confuses himself that he can no longer tell the real world from onscreen reality, a damning and timely concept.. Alternately hilarious and haunting, Reality won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2012.

RUSSIAN ARK

Aleksandr Sokurov (Russia 2002) 99 min. DCP. With Sergey Dreyden, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy. Russian with English subtitles.
Sokurov’s magnum opus is a cinematic technical feat. Consisting entirely of a single roving Steadicam shot, the film narrates three hundred years of Russian history come to life in the Hermitage Museum. Over 2,000 actors appear in the meticulously choreographed sequences as, again and again, performers break the fourth wall, interacting in novel ways though the scene never cuts to break the steady, unrelenting momentum of historical hypnosis.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS

Cristian Mungiu (Romania 2007) 113 min. DCP. With Anamaria Marinca , Vlad Ivanov , Laura Vasiliu . Romanian with English subtitles.
Winner of Cannes’ Palme d’Or, Mungiu’s second feature is set in late 1980s Ceaușescu-era Romania. Two friends and university roommates have one day to arrange for one of the women’s abortion, an act punishable by law. The harrowing task confounds notions of right and wrong–in the corrupt, repressed regime, any help offered comes at a steep price. Ideals of the state and an older generation’s petty problems all prove hollow–in the end it’s two young women against the world.

FUNNY GAMES

Michael Haneke (Austria 1997) 108 min. 35 MM. With Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch. German with English subtitles.
A relaxing family getaway at the lake becomes a nightmare when two young men in impeccable white outfits appear announced. What starts small–kitchen spills and bad manners–quickly escalates to torture and murder, and family members find themselves held hostage in their own domestic hell. Haneke, whose career is built on chipping away at any bourgeois notion of a safe space, is at his best here; this intimate take on domestic terrorism was remade a decade later by Haneke himself, with an American cast, a tribute to Funny Games’ lasting ability to quietly traumatize.

TALK TO HER

Pedro Almodóvar (Spain 2002) 112 min. 35 MM. With Rosario Flores, Javier Cámara, Leonor Watling, Darío Grandinetti, Geraldine Chaplin. Spanish with English subtitles.
Almodovar, a master of elliptical and multilayered storytelling, combines modern ballet, bullfighting, desire, loss, ophidiophobia and comatose women. Via flashbacks, the romantic histories of two men are revealed: the love of one man for a female bullfighter and the other’s obsession with a young ballerina. When both women wind up in the same hospital ward in vegetative states, the men confide their grief and secrets to each other, too late to talk to the ones they love. The complex, wrenching narrative is embellished by Almodovar’s trademark kaleidoscopic mise-en-scène.